June is almost over and it's time for a brief look back on this critical month of the wine year. It started out rather cold but with the first warm days the vines started flowering. During great weather the bloom was over in about 10 days and it turned out very well. May had already provided enough humidity for quick vine growth and at 35° C we enjoyed hot summer weather. Currently it is pretty cool again but we also had some rain that came in just right to prevent drought due to the hot weather of recent days.
Last week we already started cutting the tips of the vines. First we manually weave the them into the trellis and then we cut their tips using a tractor. Removing the tips lets a vine grow new shoots at its base. The leafs that develop there build up a nice wall and collect the sun for making sugar when the grapes ripen in August and September.
Depending on precipitation and vine growth we have to repeat this work once or twice during the summer except in special circumstances. In extremely dry vintages like 2012, some varieties don't even even grow enough for cutting their tips once. That of course leads to a tinyer harvest but this year it already looks really great. Let's hope it stays that way and we're spared bad weather. Then we can already look forward to a great vintage 2013.